Tech ? for computer hardware experts

[TheForce]

A couple months ago I lost a win 7 computer beyond repair so I decided to add a second SSD win 7 drive to my win10 video editing computer. So when I need to run a win 7 application that does not run on win 10 I just power down swap the cable on the two C drives and reboot to the other OS.
Unfortunately the added storage drives all want to do a check disk when rebooting. Aside from being annoying it FUBARs my M.2 video work storage requiring a format and lost data to repair.
Any idea why storage drives need the check disk when switching OS?

Soon I will be receiving my new high speed video editing and will put the older one on win 7 permanently.

The advantage I have with the win 7 OS is I can run 16 bit software in a win XP virtual computer. Win 10 no longer supports this.

 

[harshness]

The advantage I have with the win 7 OS is I can run 16 bit software in a win XP virtual computer. Win 10 no longer supports this.

While Windows 10 doesn't support it directly, you may be able to use a third party Virtual Machine package like VirtualBox.

This may also allow you to work around the dirty disk problem where the OS doesn't like that another OS has been "managing" its disks.

In the grand scheme, it would probably be a whole lot easier just to use a second computer. That the software designed for XP typically can't use the features that a modern machine bring makes this an easier choice. Of course if you're using XP on the same projects that you're "finishing" in Windows 10 (or vice versa), this can be a step backward unless you're using fast Network Attached Storage.

 

[TheForce]

Thanks. I did look into VMware Player but from people on YouTube, I understand it is a 30 day free trial but not sure what happens after that.

I have one important program that I use from the old days. It is Quicken running on 16bit OS. XP is the last OS I have that will run it. Reason it is important to me is because the records date back to the early 90's. I really should consider moving to a modern finance package but it's hard to break old habits. I have a really durable Dell laptop that has it on as well as several other XP programs which has been my backup.

I don't use different OS to work on projects. When the new machine gets here, I will put this one on win 7 permanently and move most of the large storage archive drives to the new computer so the video editing will all be windows 10 and all work drives M.2. I plan to have 3- 500Gb for very large video files plus the OS. I will continue to do older HD video editing and image editing in Photoshop as well as file conversions on the win 7 machine. I'm hoping this machine's troubles will go away when I stop swapping C drives between win 10 and win 7.

Thanks for the tip on VirtualBox. Heard about it but haven't looked into it yet.



Here this guy refers to SLAT technology. ( Hyper V ) I checked my system out and it does. I may experiment with the built in Virtual Mode for XP as the video describes. Have you ever heard of this?

 

[Jim S.]

I have no idea why your storage drives need to be checked every time you switch boot drives. Are you shutting down the system instead of hibernating it? I would expect so with an SSD, but that's the only thing I can think of that might cause the filesystems to be unclean. (It doesn't even make any sense to me that Windows wouldn't flush the buffers before hibernating, but I've seen warnings to never write to an NTFS drive from Linux if the Windows system was hibernated instead of shut down...)

I thought VMWare Player was free. Maybe the trial period is for professional use, or maybe it's changed since I last looked at it.

VMWare vs. Virtualbox -- people say that Virtualbox's 3D graphics acceleration emulation isn't as complete as VMWare's, and I can attest that Virtualbox's USB throughput is nothing to write home about.

I've never checked whether the virtualization software that's free with Windows 10 Professional will handle 16-bit software, because I refuse to run any version of Windows 10.

 

[Dish Sub 2015]

Go to:
Control panel / system and security / Administrative tools / Create and format disk partitions
or just search: Disk Management
Right click the partition with the secondary OS (from win7 select win10 and vise versa)
delete the drive designated letter.
That way the 2 OS will not see each other, will not wright/cash stuff on the other OS disk and will not running check disk all the time.

 

[TheForce]

I have two physical SSD drives. Each has it's own OS. But all the rest of the hardware is common to both. The two SSD drive C's are connected one at a time with the same SATA cable to the MB. Each C drive was installed as a new computer install.

When I need to switch to the other SSD, I let the computer power down completely from the Start Power off. Then I switch the SATA cable to the other SSD and power up.

My original reason to not use one SSD with two boot partitions was because I was up against enough C drive space when I set this up. The win 7 drive has lots of programs and a few very large files. Each SSD is 500 GB but the win 7 one is loaded to 380GB. If I were doing this today, I would probably use a 1 TB SSD for the win 7 drive and do the dual boot option. But soon, I will be using two computers and not be having the annoying Check Disk problem.

That way the 2 OS will not see each other, will not wright/cash stuff on the other OS disk and will not running check disk all the time.

This may be the reason I was looking for. It would explain what is happening to cause the check disk. I never mentioned but it is consistent that check disk never finds errors, just wants to run it on all my storage drives. I have 6 of them so it takes time for the boot up.

I have also learned that I must never switch OS drives when the Recycle bin is loaded, rather empty it before power down to switch. If I don't do that, I get an error on the Recycle bin is corrupt.

 

[. Raine]

Maybe setup the computer for dual boot, rather than swapping cables. If you install linux onto your computer, it'll install a bootloader and give you boot options for which OS you want on startup.That would solve the problem.

Maybe there's bootloaders for windows or multiboot options too, idk, I don't use windows. I know to dual boot (triple boot, in your case) with windows and linux, you want the windows OS's installed first, so you're good there.

 

[Dish Sub 2015]

this is different story.
Turn off the indexing of the storage drives.
The new windows run check every time because when starts finds differences in the storage drives made by the other OS.

 

[harshness]

Turn off the indexing of the storage drives.

Not that it wouldn't help, but what does file indexing have to do with filesystem integrity?

 

[harshness]

I may experiment with the built in Virtual Mode for XP as the video describes. Have you ever heard of this?

This is Microsoft's workaround to the XP emulator. The VHD utility is cool but I can't imagine wasting time and energy setting it up. I have a bunch of suitable computers in my bone yard to run stuff like that. Dual booting my daily drive Linux box (using GRUB on the Linux side) would work too I suppose. Saddling a production machine with stuff like that is stepping over dollars to pick up dimes in my mind.

Then again, since you waited so long to upgrade your bookkeeping software, you're probably stuck. Even Quicken itself will only import 2010 or later data files without one or more intermediate conversions.

 

[Foxbat]

I'll echo harshness' suggestion about VirtualBox. It does the trick running old Windows OSes on my Mac and we use at work under Windows 10 to run older software that won't run under Win 10 or Win 7.

 

[TheForce]

Even Quicken itself will only import 2010 or later data files without one or more intermediate conversions.

That was a good clue. I did a little digging and there is a whole section on converting older Quicken >98 to current 2018 in stages. But prior to 2010 they only claim it is for reference. Changes may not work. All I would like to have is reference anyway.

The new Quicken is subscription now and it is pricey.

 

[harshness]

The new Quicken is subscription now and it is pricey.

Pretty much everything you use is going to be subscription pretty soon anyway, so you might as well get used to it.

Of course the thing that is really hard to get used to is the software updating in your face. This is something I really hate about the web-based products.

There are numerous comparisons on the Internet and most of them agree that Quicken is not among the front-runners but it is one of the few that isn't web-based.

Of course if you use the software to do special stuff like printing checks or integrating with your tax preparation software, those are show-stopper criteria.

 

[navychop]

I think there will always be room for free or fixed cost basic WP, email and spreadsheet programs. Most people simply can’t justify a subscription for what little they need to do.

 

[harshness]

I think there will always be room for free or fixed cost basic WP, email and spreadsheet programs. Most people simply can’t justify a subscription for what little they need to do.

"Most people" don't really need word processing or spreadsheet programs at all. They're simply conditioned to believe that they're must-have tools.

It isn't that the free stuff is going away or going pay so much that everything that you pay for now will go to an annual rental and some of the free stuff will begin adding cool new features to pay versions of their products.

I just hope that the stuff that's free now doesn't migrate to the Software as a Service model where everything runs in a web browser. Google Drive, OneDrive and similar aren't going to be holding any of my un-encrypted personal data or media.

 

[Foxbat]

Try buying a car and not getting saddled with some telemetrics service fee (*cough* OnStar *cough*). BMW floated the idea that enabling CarPlay in their new Infotainment Center would be a monthly or annual fee.

 

[TheForce]

I recently bought a PCIe card to hold a m.2 half TB stick for my win 7 computer. I could never get it to work because the driver was nowhere to be found. But, this same computer had an SSD on the SATA with win 10 OS and the PCIe card with m.2 was recognized right away and works fine.

I was wondering why this PCIe would not work with win 7. Here are some answers:
How to Install Microsoft Windows* 7 on a PCIe* NVMe Intel® SSD

With my new computer that will have just one OS, win10 64 bit, it was easy just to install this card in the new computer. It is working fine so far.

 

[harshness]

I've been loading RAID drivers via floppy disc for years on Windows Server machines. The difference now is that modern computers don't come with floppy disks (many don't even have DVD drives). Some of my coworkers spec'd a server a while back from Dell that Dell couldn't/wouldn't install the OS on. The boot drive was an m.2 connected to a RAID controller and the OS was Windows Server 2012. Who sells a machine with drives that won't boot?

Microsoft likes it this way because it "forces" people to use more recent versions of the OSes to take advantage of new hardware. If we could easily stick with what worked, they're sales (and those of their highly trained consultant customers) would be in the dumper.

 

[TheForce]

Amazon product ASIN B001GV002AI added one of these to my older i7-950 win 7 computer. Gives me some older legacy flash card readers and the 3.5" diskette. You have to install an old IDE card too.
Amazon product ASIN B000P9VHOO
I also have nearly a hundred hard drives with IDE interface with all my TV shows project files edited with Vegas Pro. I can still bring them up with that system.

 

[harshness]

IDE docks are pretty cheap these days and some of them even feature USB 3.0. I've been clearing off dozens of old drives to relatively cheap (<$160) 8TB USB drives. I use a USB 3.0 IDE/SATA combo interface that doubles as a free-standing drive duplicator.

In the grand scheme, the USB 3.0 connected drives seem at least as fast as IDE drives and can give you access to many times the content.

The other thing I've noticed is that hard drives don't always spin up after sitting idle for a long time.